"bl_list" via Abigail in Google Reader

Fattin’ up UCSD bathrooms since 2009

2012-05-24T22:16:53Z

Fattin’ up UCSD bathrooms since 2009

“Why I Quit Dieting” slideshow

2012-05-24T15:53:38Z

I knew that diets don’t work, but I thought it was my fault.

Then a concerned and non-judgmental friend gave me the book Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere. After a couple of weeks the message sank in. I became a fat acceptance activist, stopped dieting and threw out my scale.

So yeah, seeing that felt pretty damned good. Thanks, Heather!

"Lose like a man"

2012-04-01T10:31:00Z

T/W For weight loss dieting.

I see WW are trying to repeat the inroads they made into the consciousness of white mainstream middle class/aspirant folk. As usual travelling on the tracks laid by 'obesity' cultism, they're seeking to widen their market in terms of race, class and sex.

In this case to men, black men in particular. They've possibly been most to the edge of weight loss diet culture

NICE

2012-05-13T14:50:00Z

Someone at NICE appears to have caught up with the glaring error of casting people as disease. Once you begin to see it out there flapping in the breeze in front of everyone, it's hard not to cringe.

Like, what were we thinking?

This is what happens when everyone operates with the same one track mind and none can run a critical eye over it. Nor ask anyone who can to do so. Wait, what am I

hey margitte. my name is carly and i am a canadian fatty who is flying to a different province to work. i am nervous because the last time i flew the seat belts BARELY fit. i know a while ago you travelled and asked for a seat belt extender... i just wanted to know how that went. i am extremely nervous to ask for one should i need it. please feel free to answer privately.

2012-05-24T01:31:00Z

I’ll go ahead and answer this publicly because I think it’s important for folks to know the process, especially if they’re stressed about potentially having to ask for an extender.

What happened was this: I got onto the plane (it was a Delta plane, I don’t know if that matters), sat down, was momentarily elated when I found that both armrests went down without any trouble (or too much pain), and then promptly realized there was NO way I would be able to use the buckle. Sometimes if I reorganize my clothing or shift weight around I can make a too tight seatbelt work, but this one was clearly not going to comply. I hit the ‘help requested’ button that signals a flight attendant to come, and after a few more passengers had loaded the plane the attendant asked me what I needed. I smiled at her and said “can I get a seatbelt extender?” she smiled back, said “sure thing!” and brought me one.

It was all very simple.

I had to ask for another one on my flight home (different airline, I think) and the process was similarly easy. I find it to be really odd that on some planes I can’t get the armrest down (or can, but am in a lot of pain) but have plenty of seatbelt room, and on other planes it’s the exact opposite. Sometimes I have no issues at all. Basically, it’s a crapshoot. BUT asking for a seatbelt extender isn’t super difficult if you can get over the initial anxiety of the ordeal. :)

Edited to add: you can also purchase your own extender if you don’t want to deal with asking for one!

Dieting and Logic Make Poor Bedfellows

2012-05-24T07:36:57Z

There are a couple of things that I see used as “proof” of why we should continue to cling to the idea that intentional weight loss is a good idea that involve some seriously questionable logic.

The first and most obvious issue is that, while most people can lose some weight on almost any diet, almost everyone gains it back in the long term. We have no idea how to make people permanently thin. But we get fooled into believing that if temporary weight loss is possible then permanent long term weight loss must also be possible by just doing the same things for longer, or forever. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that. In fact, the evidence shows the opposite.

The evidence we have says that nearly everyone regains the weight within 5 years no matter how they lost it. So a lot of studies stop follow up after a few months or a year and say “See, look – it worked!” I’ve actually seen studies where the researchers said “we assume that if the weight stays off for a year then it will stay off permanently.” That’s a completely ridiculous thing to say in general for a researcher, but especially when the data we DO have says that weight is regained in 2-5 years. The diet industry has refused to study long-term efficacy of dieting because it would be “too depressing for their clients”. That’s like giving women thalidomide for morning sickness but not tracking the incidence of birth defects because it’s “too depressing for future moms.” How is this defensible? If you can’t get funding for a study with 5 year follow up then any study that you do on weight loss at this point is a waste of money.

The next faulty logic they employ is the belief that losing weight will make people healthier. This weight loss = health idea is based on the assumption that becoming “normal weight” is the same thing as having always been “normal weight”. There’s no proof that’s true – that assumption has never been tested. People come in lots of different sizes for lots of different reasons. In some cases illness causes weight gain, or medication, the person’s natural body size, or something else. Not to mention that the weight loss/ weight cycling process itself could cause health issues, weight loss causes a host of physiological reactions that change the body’s metabolism and athletic potential, sometimes permanently.

By far the most common outcome of weight loss attempts is weight gain, that much is clear. Weight loss attempts have the exact opposite of the intended effect a staggering percentage of the time. It’s possible that fat people have shorter life spans than thin people, or have more illness than thin people (though I think the evidence shows that is mitigated by healthy habits) but if being fat is bad for us then dieting is the absolutely LAST thing anyone should be recommending since the most likely outcome is that we’ll be fatter. It’s like saying that the only way we know how to help joint pain is for people to fly, so everyone with some knee pain should grab a sheet and jump off their roof. If they don’t want people to be bigger than they are now, then recommending weight loss is the worst idea.

Based on the weight loss industry’s numbers, the more dieting we’ve done the bigger we’ve become (since they tell us that obesity has increased at the same as their profits) Yet the recommendation that we keep hearing is that we should keep trying to lose weight. This is just nuts! Anyone can see that it’s not going to work. Putting bunches of people on diets sets us up for years and years of “obesity epidemic” rhetoric since dieting will reliably create bigger people. The only people who benefit from this are the ones selling the diets…hey, wait a minute – you don’t suppose that’s what this is about do you? They have over 50 years of data to say that their product will work in the short term, fail in the long term, but that people will just keep coming back from more. Plus they get to use the money we paid them for the product that didn’t work to sell it to us again (including celebrity endorsers who get paid more than 30,000 a POUND to lose weight) to sell the product back to us. What the hell?

I wonder how much encouragement of weight loss there would be if we all stopped giving money to the weight loss industry. No weekly Weight Watchers fees, no $20,000 stomach amputation surgeries. If we de-funded the diet industry there wouldn’t be anyone left to spend millions of dollars (to make billions of dollars) selling us magic beans that, in billions of tries over half a century, have never reliably produced beanstalks.

If you’re looking for some inspiration, a slideshow that a number of us have been working on for a while is finally up on NBCs iVillage! Thirty Three women who said “I quit” to dieting and are happier and healthier for it!

Don’t Forget to Pre-order my book and get an autographed copy and free shipping!

Fat: The Owner’s Manual – Navigating a Thin-Obsessed World with Your Health, Happiness, and Sense of Humor Intact, with foreword by Marilyn Wann is now available for pre-order. No diet tips, no magic beans. Just a book about living life in the body that you have now, making decisions about what you want in the future, and how to get there. Whether you want to change your body, fight for size acceptance, just live your life, or understand and support your fat friends and family, this book was written to provide the insights, aha moments, humor, and hard facts to help.

Join the Club, Support My Work!

I do HAES and SA activism, speaking and writing full time, and I don’t believe in putting corporate ads on my blog and making my readers a commodity. So if you find value in my work, want to support it, and you can afford it, please consider a paid subscription (it works like a fan club – you get extra stuff, discounts, and you’re always the first to know about things) or a one-time contribution. The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free. If you’re curious about this policy, you might want to check out this post. Thanks for reading! ~Ragen

Facts are Bullshit

2012-05-24T06:39:00Z

Who needs facts when you've got prejudice and 'common sense' on your side? Obviously not this guy. Trigger warning for diet and weight loss talk, classism and fatphobia. A conversation courtesy of an image on Facebook on a friend's wall. The D00D is not my friend, thankfully, but a friend of a friend.

Me: Besides crap food being more readily available and cheaper than the nutrtional stuff, obesity is a 70% inheritable trait. Fat kids likely have fat parents and other close family.

D00D: buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuullshit. fat kids are fat because they eat crap and dont excersise. 70% inheritable through lifestyle perhaps, but dont give me the genealogy thing here.

Me: Call buuuuullshit all you want, I'll show you the NYT article that quotes the study, buddy. The calories in/calories out, fat just because of diet argument wont fly with me, because IT is bullshit. I strongly recommend you read this article and educate yourself before you further embarass yourself on V's facebook wall. (Fatstronauts 101 by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville)

D00D: so let me get this straight, you dont think that a dramatic change in the types and style of food consumption, coupled with the dramatic changes in our lifestyle habits has much to do with the rampant obesity in children? kids are fat asses today because they traded home cooked staples full of vitamins and nutrients for quick fix costco ready made meal, and thats when they are not eating at McDonalds. they traded in exercise in the streets with their friends for wii tennis and world of warcraft. they traded in moderate eating habits for eating massive amounts of food because it gives them something to do during their sedentary, boredom filled day. Im tired of hearing politically correct reasons for why our new generations are failing biologically and cognitively - it is of our own construct and it is time we take ownership of it. put down the fries and pick up some greens... and do some sit ups - problem solved.

Random Friend: Yay! Classism and fatphobia! MY FAVESIES! (I had to 'like' her comment because damn, spot on.)

Me: "put down the fries and pick up some greens... and do some sit ups - problem solved" LOL FOREVER. If there was a guaranteed way to make fat people thin, we'd be all over that, but there isn't, so the diet and weight loss industries get to keep making billions of dollars a year off of fat people's insecurity and the OMGOBESITYEPIDEMIC!!!! 95% of diets fail, and I'm not talking the fad diet kind. Every time someone diets, 95% of the time the weight comes back with friends. D00D, did you even read the entire article? Noone is saying that some people aren't fat because of poor diet and/or bad excersise habits. My point is, and same with the article, is that it's a much more complicated situation, and 'put down the french fries and go run some laps' is not, and has never been, the solution. If it WAS there wouldn't be a fat person on the planet-there are no social, emotional or mental benefits from being fat. Many fat folk would trade their existance of constant ridicule and mockery in a heartbeat if simply moving more and eating less would do the trick. IT DOESN'T.
Sorry, V, but your buddy there obviously has no idea what he's talking about and while he's entitled to his own opinions, he's not entitled to his own facts.

(I posted up a couple of more links to data and such, hoping he'd either read and change his mind (HA!) or at least shut up gracefully, but to no avail.)

D00D: no i did not read the article fully. in fact, i did not read it at all. i didnt read it for the same reason i wouldnt read christian science articles explaining away fossil records of dinosaurs. because its bullshit. kids are fatter than ever, and its not because of genes. and yes, there is a miracle cure - diet and exercise. and no, not everybody would jump on it because it implies work and dedication to a healthy lifestyle. putting down french fries and doing laps is definitely a solution, and one that works a hell of a lot better than accepting a false fact that you are per-disposed to being fat and then eating whatever the hell you want. lets put it this way - there were no fat cave men, in developing nations where food is not scarce and an active lifestyle is had there is very low levels of obesity.

Me: Your need to hang on to your own prejudices in the face of evidence is telling. I'm sad for you. Since you wont bother to educate yourself, this convo is indeed over.

Write to Comedy Central & tosh.0!

2012-05-23T18:25:00Z

Here is the letter I wrote in response to this mess:

To Whom It May Concern,

My name is Margitte Kristjansson and I am a longtime viewer of Comedy Central (and an occasional viewer of tosh.0). I am also a writer, activist, filmmaker, and PhD student in Communication at UCSD.

I am aware that Comedy Central prides itself on its humor. Humor is a wonderful thing—and even humor that is “risky” (potentially offensive or otherwise seen as “not nice”) can be incredibly important to the process of critically analyzing culture and politics. That said, the humor used utilized by Daniel Tosh and the tosh.0 staff is not usually quite so high-brow, and is often more offensive than funny.

Two days ago, a major line was crossed when a writer for the tosh.0 blog illegally copied a picture from The Adipositivity Project (an activist project intended to raise awareness about fat hatred and prejudice) and used it for comedic fodder for Daniel Tosh’s viewers/blog readers. Rather than use comedy to get people to rethink their negative attitudes and beliefs about fatness, tosh.0 used the picture in a way that further contributed to the oppression of fat people. It was not only nasty and potentially hurtful—it was also illegal. (The picture was modified to erase The Adipositivity Project’s watermark, thus failing to properly credit the photographer, Substantia Jones). In an age where anyone can use the Google image search function to find proper attribution for a photo found on the internet, this is completely inexcusable.

While I understand that most of the image has since been removed from the site (a thumbnail still exists, and I’m told you can still see the entire picture and thread on the mobile site) I am still incredibly disappointed in your network and the leadership involved in the tosh.0 blog that allowed this to occur in the first place. Many people are calling for an apology from the network, and I stand with them and the artist Substantia Jones.

Please do better next time.

Sincerely,

Margitte Kristjansson

Feel free to copy and paste in your own email to Comedy Central (mail@comedycentral.com).

xo,

Margitte

Red No. 3: Tosh.0 steals intellectual property from Adipositivity.com

2012-05-23T17:23:00Z

Red No. 3: Tosh.0 steals intellectual property from Adipositivity.com:

shewhorollswithrolls:

I’m horrified and disgusted by Comedy Central and Tosh.0 in a way that I can’t even voice- they have stolen an image from the Adipositivity Project, a website whose aim is to promote size acceptance and body positivity, and are using it to fan the flames of bigotry and hatred. I’m copying a blog post below from James Carter, which includes information on how to contact Comedy Central and ask that the image be removed, lest they incur legal action (action which is already underway, I might add).

I urge you to write to Comedy Central and add your voice to stop this hatred:

fat shaming and stealing: tosh.0 style

I want to let you know about Daniel Tosh’s theft of Substantia Jones‘ photograph that features my friend Janie Martinez. If you need to see the vitriol currently being spewed out onto it at the Tosh.0 website, go here.

Over and over, fat people are the butt of jokes, and it must stop. To add insult to injury, Comedy Central and Tosh.0 are using Substantia’s photo illegally. Substantia is a professional photographer who features professional models and every day folk celebrating their beauty and life.

To have Mr. Tosh or anyone steal these photographs for the explicit use of mean, snarky jibes continues a cycle of bullying culture. We wonder why people, especially women, have body image issues, yet the fat shaming entertainment industry encourages this belittling of people. It perpetuates a myth that one cannot be beautiful at any size, and it encourages trolls and bullies to believe what they write is actually funny. It’s not. It’s angry, spiteful and hurtful.

You can do something about this illegal, immoral activity. Please contact comedy central to protest Daniel Tosh’s theft of intellectual property:

Phone: (212) 767-8600
Fax: (212) 767-8592
Email:mail@comedycentral.com

It may not seem like a big deal in this day and age where we right click on photos and share them like toys in a sandbox, but Comedy Central and Daniel Tosh make money off stolen images like this. Reach out, stand up for artists, and help renounce sizeism.

Here we have a photo that included a watermark, but saw that watermark edited out so folks could pass around the photo to mock the subject (who is awesome, by the way!). I suspect Tosh.0’s defense will be that someone else stole it first as they have the audacity to credit the photo to some shady pic dump site. Yeah, folks on Pinterest and Tumblr do this all the time, but they are actually all wrong, too. Comedy Central is just wrong in a different way since they are profiting from the infringement.

While the comments on this post are especially odious, I was pleased that Substantia Jones’ response was right up on top.

(via nerdpoet)

This is the last thing I saw before I went to bed last night—is it any wonder I woke up especially grumpy today?

ETA: It looks like the image has been taken down (sort of—there’s still a thumbnail of it but if you click on it it takes you to an empty page)—I hope someone got screenshots of everything. I was able to take the following this morning before I taught about copyright infringement and the Visual Artists’ Rights Act of 1990:

Red No. 3: Conservative writer S.E. Cupp has a photo used and altered by Hustler...

2012-05-23T17:20:21Z

Red No. 3: Conservative writer S.E. Cupp has a photo used and altered by Hustler...:

red3blog:

Conservative writer S.E. Cupp has a photo used and altered by Hustler magazine to show her in a sexually explicit situation.

Liberal blogger Melissa McEwen has a photo stolen and used to create a racist and sexist dating ad.

Photographer Substantia Jones and model Janie Martinez have a photo stolen and used to encourage fat shaming.

Its like there is a trend of women having their pictures appropriated by people who disagree with them in order to objectify and sexually humiliate the women. Well, not like. Though I suppose to truly be a trend, this would signify that this is different from how our culture usually treats women. This is just par for the course. Women are seen as property, fit to be used and abused whenever they need to be put in their place. Its bullshit.

Connective Tissue

2012-05-23T22:58:06Z

I am honored to present Connective Tissue, about Samson’s experience with unexplained lactation. Samson is a genderqueer, transgender androgyne living in the southeastern US. They are an educator, a communication junkie and a lover of many languages, programming and music included. They blog at the Felt Fedora and tweet at @feltfedora.

Connective Tissue

(This post references my hormones and my history with medical professionals’ reactions to them. If you need more context, this previous post will help.)

I had nightmares last night. They were confusing, fluid, and at times nonsensical, the way my nightmares tend to be, and in an odd narrative spiral, so that each event is continually revisited, never completely allowed to rest.

In the lulls between, though, my nightmares gave me an odd gift. I dreamed I was nursing a child.

–

It was lactation that finally pushed me to find a trans*-friendly doctor. I went off of birth control last year, back to the hormones my body produces on its own. (I have noncongenital adrenal hyperplasia, so I have higher-than-”normal” levels of androgens, although this was still undiagnosed at the time.) I expected the boat to rock plenty as my body readjusted; I was expecting facial hair growth and irregular and painful cycles, the same as I had before birth control, and I got that. As a bonus, my voice also dropped. I was not, however, expecting to lactate.

I thought my hormones would be swinging toward androgen-heavy, so I couldn’t figure out how that would make me lactate. Was the cause, instead, the fact that I was regularly binding on weekdays? Was it a temporary effect of withdrawal from birth control? Was I sick–did I have cancer?

I recognized that I needed to see a doctor about this, and about my hormones in general, something I was dreading after the experience that left me on birth control in the first place. I knew I needed a trans*-friendly doctor. It was mostly a matter of practicality: I thought it could be binding that was making me lactate, and I needed a doctor who wouldn’t have a knee-jerk reaction of, “Stop binding. Problem solved (and even if it isn’t, you shouldn’t be doing that anyway).”

So I set out to find a trans*-friendly doctor. I found one. And when I brought up binding, he flinched a moment, but continued calmly as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.

“That kind of compression wouldn’t be causing it,” he said, and simply went on.

Over the next several months, I went through a battery of blood tests. Samples and smears. Manual exams. And this all just for the lactation–none of the other hormonal issues being diagnosed. The whole thing was highly pathologized–not that I can blame anyone. I was (and am) a trans person, never pregnant in my life, possibly infertile, no partner to stimulate lactation. What could it be but disease?

As it turns out, there appears to be no reason at all.

My prolactin and progesterone levels were both nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing suggested cancer. There was nothing I was physically doing to my chest that should be causing me to lactate. My doctor and I settled on not worrying about it; he had ruled out anything frightening, and the only cause for concern was any discomfort it was causing me (I assured him there was none). He instructed me to “leave it alone,” and that in time it might wane.

I’ve discovered that I will be very sad if it does wane.

There’s something about it that sits right with me, despite all odds. I am very much not a woman, and used to experience quite some dysphoria about my chest. It surprises me that something characterized as so essential(istical)y female and “woman” is something that I find now familiar, comfortable… organic?

Today I was linked to a collection of stories on breastfeeding and weaning. Leafing through the parents’ stories of breastfeeding, weaning, and the close relationships they had with their children surrounding those things, I felt both a kinship with and a confused distance from the relational experiences described.

Lactation has changed my relationship with my own body. In an endeavour to explore and mend my relationship with my body, lactation somehow made my chest safer to me. (I remarked one day, to a friend, “If I have to have breasts, at least they’re functional.”) I’ve developed a comfortable sort of relationship with it; counter to my doctor’s orders, I don’t “leave it alone.” I manually express. I look at the milk–never more than a few drops–and marvel at how swirled and pearly it is. I’ve tasted it. (Reading stories of weaning and unweaning reminded me of a memory: me at four, not long after my sibling was born, asking to nurse again just to remember what it was like, and my mother, palpably uncomfortable, shortly refusing. I was disappointed, but didn’t think anything odd of my request.) Somehow my chest feels more organically interwoven with the rest of my body; it doesn’t feel like the strange interloper that it used to, the one that showed up uninvited at age nine and started messing things up at skin level. It feels rooted, somehow. Part of my experience. Part of me.

I’m left with a sense of how much it is not a part of anyone else, though. I don’t have a child or a partner that shares this with me. Reality is really much like a reduced-capacity version of my dream: nursing was a connective experience, but it was one that connected me with myself–not with my dream-child, who was not characterized as much more than an animated doll that I carried with me. It’s an open loop, somehow: everything about lactation, nursing, breastfeeding seems to imply a relationship, a purpose, a person or persons for whom the milk is being created. As much as it connects me with myself, I’m missing that other piece, that other who is connected to me through the experience.

I have wondered about how to broach the topic with partners (which has, so far, been avoided by relationships fading before they become that intimate). How do you explain to a partner that if they touch you in the ways you’re asking them to, you will–I mean, you’re going to lactate on them and you don’t mind and actually find it kind of sexy. As a trans person. As someone who is not a woman. Who has never been pregnant. Who has no reason to be lactating.

I’m left puzzled by the whole thing, this unexpected gift. I do consider it a gift–one that many people (I’m thinking of trans women in particular) sometimes go to great lengths to have, that others inexplicably don’t have, and here I inexplicably do. It’s just puzzling to be sitting alone with a gift that seems, by default, to be meant for more than one person.

The Right to Talk about Fat Experience

2012-05-23T21:07:16Z

When fat people try to talk about their own experiences with body shame, fat stigma or weight based discrimination they are always challenged in a way to undermine the significance of them with people exclaiming that some of those experiences also happen to people in thin bodies. While the truth is that many of the shaming tactics used toward fat people do happen to thin people as well, the outcry from thin people to also feel as though we must validate their experience ignores the reality that they always have their experiences validated by every mainstream body positive organization or campaign that has ever existed.

The dominant discourse that surrounds the body acceptance movement as a whole is one that is directly geared toward thin bodies and the lack of voices from fat people are not noticed unless you are fat yourself. People who think that the voices of thin people are not being talked about enough in fat positive spaces are inadvertently reinforcing fat oppression. They do this by undermining the experiences of fat people because they feel as though it happens to everyone. Not only is this incorrect because the motive behind body shaming and stigma of a fat person and a thin person can be drastically different but the ways fat stigma takes part in being a fat person in society turns into actual discrimination. When dismissing fat experience by saying that thin people also have those same experience a person is completely ignoring that they still have the privilege that comes from living in a thin body.

Fat people do not have to make space for thin people when discussing their own experiences because of this privilege and due to the reality that thin people do not make space for our voices in their own discussions. When a dominant group tries to invalidate the experience of an oppressed group it is actively working to silence them. Coming from a place of privilege and expecting an oppressed group to make space for your experience is not only insulting but shows that you are not really interested in understanding the difference among experience or forms of oppression. This also happens within the feminist movement when white feminists expect black feminists to open their spaces to be ‘inclusive’ when those same white feminists do not make their spaces open for all women or experiences.

As a white fat female with some thin privilege I do not have the right to expect fat spaces for people who are larger than I am or any other group that I do not fit into to open and validate my experience. If they allow me to be part of their space I am not only grateful for it but I spend my time listening and learning not expecting them to include me. I also actively try to understand the privileges that I do have so that I can understand the difference between my own experiences and theirs. We should be celebrating difference not pushing it aside and ignoring it.

As fat people we have the right to talk about our experiences without being bullied into validating the experiences of thin people who feel like we don’t talk about the similarities among us. We need to start expecting people with thin privilege who are also advocates of body acceptance to make our voices heard and not brush them aside. We need to call people and organizations out for creating a form of acceptance that doesn’t challenge fat stigma or discrimination. We need to tell them that our experiences matter, that they are different and that difference is something that can help all people regardless of size.

Five Great: Kitchen Gadgets Worth the Counter Space

2012-05-23T14:45:40Z

Some unforeseen technical jackanapery means this post is two days late.

In the intervening 48 hours, I made Hot Latin Boy his first ever banana pudding.

He’d never had it before and by the low moaning sounds he’s been making –similar to the sounds my shar-pei makes when I rub his ears, I call it an eargasm– I can tell the pleasures of warm, homemade vanilla pudding (do you even need to ask whether there’s bourbon in it?) are new to him.

Over on the Facebook page, I pondered which is the greater sin: using a half of a Hershey’s bar when making a single s’more (excessive and ruins the whole delicate taste and texture ratio) or those miserly folks who only use one slice of banana per Nilla wafer in their banana pudding.

One reader seemed unclear as to the usage of the phrase “banana pudding”.

It is not the same thing as banana-flavored pudding.

Banana pudding is alternating layers of Nilla wafers and sliced ripe bananas drenched in warm homemade vanilla custard and let to chill. Some people top their pudding with meringue and others with whipped cream.

Some may use homemade ladyfingers as their cookie and some use Chessmen (though usually this is seen as embarrassingly bougie and most likely to be sign of a social climbing Methodist who wants to impress the Episcopalian Daughters of the King) but if it isn’t homemade pudding –and honestly there is no reason not to make your own custard, it takes five minutes and is infinitely superior to any boxed variety– it’s not banana pudding.

I don’t even have the strength to discuss Cool Whip as a topping.

Which brings me to my next point.

I don’t want to overgeneralize or make some sort of inflammatory logically indefensible assertion here, but it must be said:

I’m pretty sure people who don’t make their own mayonnaise don’t get into heaven, at least not on their first try.

Admittedly, this might not hold up to rigorous theological testing and Duke’s enthusiasts probably go to limbo instead of straight to the bottom floor. I haven’t really worked out all the details yet. Hmm, I wonder what Mayo Limbo would be like…probably a place where you can get shrimp and grits but they’re lumpy and made by some guy from Connecticut.

*shudder*

Anyway, the other day Twistie was talking about kitchen gadgets she didn’t need. I also have an aebelskiver pan, although I’ve never actually had aebelskiver as I was most likely vaccinated against it as a child.

Although I’ve been felled by the siren song of a completely useless gadget once or twice (I’m looking at you, bread machine) I tend to save my serious errors in judgment for outside the kitchen.

Still, one must look on the sunny side, so here is a list of five kitchen tools that more than earn their counter space.

Cuisinart Stick Blender

This thing sees near-daily service. Yesterday I used it to make agua sandia, a refreshing watermelon drink. I just cut the top off a seedless watermelon, removed a chunk from the middle and put the stick blender right in the melon and made two liters of delicious fresh watermelon juice in approximately two minutes. Blending soups right in the pot, making pesto, whizzing up smoothies or frozen umbrella drink and of course, making homemade mayonnaise. This is one of my solid gold gadget purchases and I’d buy one again in a heartbeat.

Kitchen Kettle Multi-Cooker

Unlike Twistie, I do love my deep fryer.

I rarely eat deep fried foods, but potato chips are so much better when homemade that storebought ones –excluding the divine Grandma Utz’s– just aren’t worth the caloric investment. Still, I’m not interested in one trick ponies, so it’s nice to know the Kitchen Kettle also serves as a rice and veggie steamer, pasta cooker and slow cooker, so it earns its place on my counter. I’m pretty sure it’d be great for popcorn too, but popcorn is an abomination unto the Lord and also gets stuck in my teeth, so I guess that will remain a mystery.

Enameled Aluminum Lemon Squeezer

Another tool that gets a daily workout here at Villa Plumcake is my lemon squeezer. The lime tree in my backyard assaults me with citrus on a near daily basis and very few things in Mexico are served without a final hit of lime, but even when I lived stateside my enamel-coated metal squeezer saw a lot of action, particularly around cocktail time.

BonJour Mini Butane Torch

Okay, a mini butane torch is just fun. I used it on my banana pudding and there’s always this frisson of excitement. It’s like a handgun, but slightly less likely to ruin your meringue.

It’s also useful, especially for those of us whose favorite dessert is crème brûlée but have yet to master the art of broiling sugar in the oven.

As much as I’d like to eat crème brûlée every day, my little blowtorch sees more action browning sugar atop grapefruit halves, roasting small peppers and tomatoes, toasting small quantities of spices or easily-burned nuts (pine nuts do wonderfully in this, giving you even less of an excuse to not make your own pesto) or giving that extra punch of crispy caramelization for whatever comes out of the kitchen. Necessary? Not really, but surprisingly useful and unsurprisingly fun.

Weighmax Electronic Kitchen Scale

I think I mentioned my hesitation buying a kitchen scale before.

To me they were always related to fad diets and gave me ugly flashbacks just thinking of them, but honestly, they’re damn handy and make using European recipes which usually give dry measurements in weight, not volume, a snap. Plus, if you’re baking in less-than-ideal circumstances or can’t understand why your famous layer cake sometimes comes out like heaven and other times like hockey pucks, measure your ingredients by weight. You’ll be glad you did.

Are skinny women shamed as much as fat women? [And, does it matter?]

2012-05-23T11:00:05Z

For the “What I Wish You Knew” series over on Rage Against the Minivan, a blog I lovelovelovelovelove (in case you wondered), a reader submission addressed the topic of discrimination against thinner women. [Please note, the author makes explicit mention of weight, and the post could be triggering for some. Use your best judgment.]

Megyn shares her personal experience with food allergies that have caused her to be underweight and the subject of others’ critical stares and scathing comments. She makes some excellent points:

There is so much out there about loving your curves and accepting your body if you’re not thin. But what about us thin women? Is it ok to belittle and begrudge us? To make snide remarks and disgusted looks? Speaking badly of someone’s weight seems more socially acceptable of thin women than of heavier women. It’s hard to love my body when everyone else tells me I too should hate it and be disgusted. That I am wrong and not ok.

Megyn’s right. Discrimination against thinner women is not something that’s talked about very often. Society does seem to think that it’s okay to pour it’s commentary on how skinny women should “eat more” or “put on a few pounds” without a second thought. In fact, one of the very first posts on NTS addressed this issue, because I think it’s so important.

We all too often forget that creating a world in which weight stigma doesn’t exist means creating a safe space for people of all shapes and sizes. The truth is skinny women don’t all want to be that way. Some struggle with food allergies. Others with illnesses that have wrecked havoc on their bodies. Others may have been the victims of neglect or malnourishment in youth. And still others do struggle with eating disorders, but are no less deserving of respect. So, I understand Megyn’s frustration, dealing with health issues that not only cause her to have to eat differently, but to then be scrutinized for it.

Perhaps the comments she bears are born out of jealousy, discomfort, or simply our hyper-focus on others’ bodies. Whatever the reason, there’s work we need to do culturally and personally to address weight shaming.

So here’s where I disagree with Megyn:

I want you to know thin women are prejudiced against just as much as heavier women.

Perhaps I’m splitting hairs here, or playing right into the Pain Olympics (Waaa! We have it worse!). But I think that this statement is 100% untrue. To me, it’s like a white person saying, “I want you to know that I am just as prejudiced against as a black person.” I just don’t buy it. [Am I opening myself for a firestorm here?]

Everything that I know from reading countless research studies, following the HAES movement, working with patients across the full weight spectrum, and living as a person in a weight-focused world tells me that fat people have it worse. Period.

Larger folks are shamed at nearly every turn – in the workplace, at the grocery store, on the internet, at restaurants, on the playground, in the voting booths, and in their own families, as a start. While perhaps (and I say that tentatively), the comments are more underground when it comes to people we consider overweight or obese, the effects (in salary, opportunities, respect, etc.) are profound.

I think it’s important that we take a cold, hard look at the discrimination happening against larger people. We have to recognize privilege as it exists, or we are doomed to live blind and biased. That’s all.

Now that I’ve stated that fat people have it worse, I recognize that it’s not all that helpful to pit one side against the other, and that’s not what I mean to do. Really. It doesn’t make what’s happening to Megyn better. I just think that making the comparison doesn’t have to be part of her argument.

This actually shouldn’t be a battle of who is more shamed, because the real victims here are women in general. When fat people or thin people are shamed for their weight, we are all hurt. If we grow up fearing being anywhere but in the dead center of the weight spectrum, we perpetuate the stigmatization and we become terrified of letting our bodies find their natural rhythm.

My heart aches for Megyn and her struggle, because no one deserves to be stared down for their size.

What do you think?

[Speaking of not pitting people against one another, one of the best posts I’ve read recently also appeared on Rage Against the Minivan – Where Is the Mommy War for the Motherless Child? Go check it out.]

Product Review: Simply Be

2012-05-23T10:36:35Z

Recently I was contacted by Simply Be, a UK plus-size clothing retailer to ask if I’d like to review some of their product here on Fat Heffalump. Always keen to try out new plus-size options on the market and share whether they’re any good, I said yes!

They sent me two dresses out of a selection of pieces that I liked the look of on their website. The first was this cute teal skater dress, from the Angels and Ribbons label:

I teamed mine with pale blue tights from We Love Colors, the grey suede booties that Autograph Fashion gave me after wearing them in the Women’s Weekly fashion shoot, and a pair of cute long earrings in an antique gold look with pale blue “stones” that I’ve had for ages. The first thing that I noticed about this dress was the fabric. It’s thick, soft and solid. It looks like it will last for ages. The dress is actually more teal than this photo shows. It is well made, has good facing around the neckline to make it sit nicely and has lots of shape cut into it with that kind of princess style around the bust. I can see myself wearing it with pants or leggings as well as tights. It is definitely a winter dress for here in Brisbane though – I think I’d swelter in it during our summer.

They also sent me this Angel Sleeve Jersey Tunic dress, which has a really cute floral:

Excuse the very dorky photograph of me! I teamed this one with a cardigan from Target Australia, We Love Colors leggings and my Autograph black riding boots. Oh and some big old earrings I have from Diva I think.

This dress isn’t made of as high grade fabric as the skater dress, but it’s such a fab print, bright and colourful and something that could be mixed and matched with all colours and shapes. It’s very soft on, and has the prettiest fluttery sleeves (sadly which are covered by my cardie). I think I’ll wear this one a lot. I’m not sure it will last as long as the teal one though.

They stock from size 12UK – 32UK. In both cases, I got a UK32 in size, which fit me generously and I’m normally a size 26AU.

I found quite a few garments on the website that I really liked. They also stock Anna Scholz and Zandra Rhodes among other labels.

The only disappointing thing is, it doesn’t seem that Simply Be ship to Australia. But they have affiliate sites for the US and Europe.

Anyone else had experience with Simply Be? Share in the comments!

Filed under: clothing, fatshion, plus-sizes, reviews, shopping, Simply Be

Girl Scouts – Cookie Sales and Calorie Counting?

2012-05-23T06:07:40Z

The Girl Scouts of America made a massive misstep by partnering with the profit-motivated Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation and misappropriating $250,000 to teach Girl Scouts weight control tricks, the most likely outcome of which is an unhealthy relationship with food and disordered eating…

Or that’s how the press release should have started. When I read the actual release (which is from November, 2011 but has recently been recirculated) it struck me that they seemed strangely proud of the fact that they are touting Calories In/Calories Out, otherwise known as “energy balance” theory. In fact the title of the press release is “Fighting Obesity with Calories In Calories Out.” I think I can explain that (and I will in a moment) but first let’s take a look at how many ways this is wrong:

First, “Simple Calories In/Calories Out” is probably the most prevalent and persistent myth that exists when it comes to health and weight. Even if they are suggesting it as a method of “preventing obesity”, the main problem is that it’s so difficult to figure out the calories out part of the equation. Almost everyone knows someone who eats tons of food never works out and stays thin. On the other side, almost everyone knows a fat person who eats healthy and exercises but doesn’t lose weight (although, curiously, the calories in /calories out proponents typically say that the former is perfectly normal and the latter is impossible). There is no evidence to suggest that this works. Worse, it tells girls not to trust their bodies and hunger but to count calories and focus on their weight – a dangerous combination according to studies.

Surely they’re not suggesting it for weight loss since it’s been studied repeatedly since at least 1959 with consistent results: utter failure.

In fact, encouraging weight control in kids is highly suspect, perhaps even dangerous. Over the last decade (since we’ve been focusing on kid’s weight) the number of hospitalizations for eating disorders in kids under twelve is up 119%. According to research from the University of Minnesota “None of the behaviors being used by adolescents (in 1999) for weight-control purposes predicted weight loss[in 2006]…Of greater concern were the negative outcomes associated with dieting and the use of unhealthful weight-control behaviors, including significant weight gain.” And yes Virginia, that includes “energy balancing”.

I think that the biggest problem with this completely overblown “OmigodChildhoodObesity Panic” is that it has given way to the idea that we don’t need to test interventions because there’s just. no. time. So we’re experimenting on a generation of kids. And we’re doing multiple experiments at the same time – their school has some untested, unproven interventions. Their doctor has some unproven, untested interventions. Their extracurricular activities are apparently getting in on the mix. I got an e-mail from a read who was watching the Armed Forces Network and they had a commercial where a little girl was a role model because she was taking things off her friends trays and telling them what to eat. Where’s the evidence that little girls bullying little kids results in greater health or thinner kids. If I tried to get IRB approval for this I would get laughed out – it’s dangerous and inappropriate.

So how did this go so wrong? Who is the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation?

Let’s start with the information that it’s President is also on the board of the Girl Scouts. She has an impressive brand management resume but absolutely no background in health or scientific research.

The board chair is the chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. Impressive business resume, not a single health qualification, or research background.

The Board Chair Emeritus is the CEO of Kellogs. No health qualifications, no research background.

The Vice Chair is the CEO of Hy-Vee (operates more than 230 retail stores in eight Midwestern states). No health qualifications, no research background.

Not to brag, but I have a decently impressive business background as well as research and fitness credentials so let me float a theory: These people are interested in promoting “energy balance” because it takes to focus off the quality of the food – which is an area where they would otherwise be heavily scrutinized. They get to say that they are “doing something” about childhood obesity while taking the attention off of their food, and they are doing with with government money and, unbelievably, public donations which they are comfortable asking for on their website (minimum donation – $50)

I don’t actually care what their major malfunction is, they have absolutely no right to run for-profit/CYA experiments on kids.

Whatever your beliefs about the so-called “Childhood Obesity Epidemic”, it’s important to know that we have no idea how to change kid’s weight (or whether a kid’s extra weight is due to their upcoming growth spurt, their body’s natural size, or something else). There is no proof that teaching calorie counting to Brownies and Girl Scouts makes them healthier or less likely to be fat. There is plenty of evidence that suggests that teaching calorie counting to Brownies and Girl Scouts makes them more likely to develop eating disorders and an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise. There is no reason in the world to risk it. If someone is suggesting an “obesity prevention” initiative for your kids (or for you) demand to see the evidence that it works long-term and that it doesn’t do harm. We do not have to be the subjects in a grand (and highly profitable for everyone but us) anti-obesity experiment.

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Everyone now: Put your crutches in the air!

2012-05-23T03:27:14Z

So as of May 14, I am newly employed. It’s a position in a children’s retail chain and I am …

Calling All Amateur Botanists

2012-05-23T02:32:00Z

I found this wildflower growing on the bank of the creek running through my backyard:

It's got small, star-shaped white flowers with a cluster of short yellow stalks in the center; almost like a narcissus, only with very different stem and leaf structure. (See, it's got one stem, with all the leaves coming off of it, and two flowers at the top).

Its leaves are kind of weird-looking, too --- they're much larger than the flowers, longer than they are wide, with edges that I'm not sure whether to call serrated, because the "points" are so rounded.

Here's a close-up of the flower: this picture isn't as clear as the others, because I had to move closer to the plant to take it, and the flower is growing out of a fairly steep creek bank. Thus I was in an unstable position when I took it, and wasn't really able to steady the camera.

(I notice, though, that while the flower in that picture might be out of focus, the thorns on the stem show up beautifully. Auto-focus can be a very strange thing.)

So, does anyone know what this is?

I made this to convince Chris that we should get matching Fiats...

2012-05-22T15:47:00Z

I made this to convince Chris that we should get matching Fiats someday do you think it will work?

the HAES files: Why Obesity is NOT an Eating Disorder

2012-05-22T15:28:32Z

by Jon Robison, PhD, MS

From time to time I overhear or read about people discussing whether obesity should be considered an Eating Disorder (ED). I have even seen obesity listed along with anorexia and bulimia as if it were just common knowledge that it belonged there. This is just wrong on so many levels that it almost seems like it is not worth acknowledging the discussion. On the other hand, it is so often promulgated both in the lay media and in scientific circles that perhaps it is important to elucidate the ways in which the classification of obesity as an ED makes no sense.

To begin with, Eating Disorder Reviews defines EDs as:

Extreme expressions of a range of weight and food issues…serious emotional problems that can have life threatening consequences.

Obesity, on the other hand, is defined as a Body Mass Index (BMI) equal to or greater than 30. It is a measure of height and weight (kg/m2). Just as there are different eating disorders, there are other measures of height and weight; The Ponderal Index, The Body Mass Prime and The Body Volume Index to name a few. An ED is a serious emotional problem/illness and obesity is a measure of height and weight. So, on the most basic level comparing obesity and eating disorders is somewhat like comparing apples and oranges.

Actually, the comparison is really a good deal more obtuse than that because apples and oranges are at least both fruits. The comparison between obesity and eating disorders is really more akin to comparing an apple with a chair. You can’t sit in an apple and you can’t eat a chair!

Actually, on a somewhat lighter note, I have seen a chair shaped like an apple, but you still can’t eat it.

It is important to remember (as I discussed in a previous blog post) that this BMI measure (1) was never meant to be a measure of health and (2) is a population statistic not meant to be used on individuals. So, making connections between this measure of obesity and the serious emotional health issue of EDs is scientifically unjustified and inappropriate.

On the next most basic level, it is certainly true that body weight and eating disorders both have something to do with food. Yet, the evidence that people labeled as obese eat more than other people is inconclusive at best, with some recent research even suggesting that just the opposite may be the case. So, the very common suggestion that you can know whether someone is eating the “proper amount” of food (or the “right kind” of food for that matter) by looking at them is not supported by the evidence and therefore, doing so can best be defined as prejudice (pre-judging).

Of course, the lack of supportive evidence for this conclusion does not stop people from continually making it. In fact, the word obesity itself comes from the Latin obesus, whose primary definition, “one who has become plump through eating,” confirms the misconception. Instructively but perhaps not surprisingly, the secondary definition for obesity usually includes the words coarse and vulgar.

From a phenotypical perspective, the concept of obesity as an ED also makes no sense. Most patients with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa have always been thin and “normal weight” people. However, everyone knows that the vast majority of people in these weight categories do not have an ED. With the acknowledgement of Binge Eating Disorder (BED), many therapists are now seeing fat people who have an eating disorder. As is true with people of any size, of course, the vast majority of fat people also do not have BED. Research suggests that somewhere between 4% and 8% of people labeled as obese may suffer from BED which means that the overwhelming majority, 92% to 96%, do not!

In conclusion, here is what we can now say about the relationship between obesity and ED. They are about as related as the chair and the apple. Suggesting that someone has an ED simply by virtue of their BMI is prejudicial, unscientific and unethical. As fat activist and author of Fat!So? Marilyn Wann puts so eloquently:

The only thing anyone can diagnose by looking at a fat person is their own level of prejudice toward fat people.

Tagged: binge eating disorder, BMI, body mass prime, body volume index, eating disorders, fat, obesity, ponderal, ponderal index, weight